DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thrillers: Books 1-3

by Oliver Davies

  “Like Selene and the letter,” Mills suggested. “Maybe they’re supposed to work it out.”

  I paced around Smith’s desk, chewing the inside of my lip. It wouldn’t be any old place, nowhere random. They’d have picked it on purpose. A place with history, like my stupid old coaching house I realised dimly. I paused.

  “Where was Selene from?” I asked.

  Mills flipped open his notebook. “A village a few miles north of the estate,” he answered and showed me the page.

  I frowned as the name rang a bell. “Ragsdale,” I remembered. “That’s the village where Ragsdale came from.”

  “The painter?”

  I found the village on the map, scooting around the fields. There was a butcher, of course, there was, a little mark over the cottage Ragsdale had lived in and just outside, sat against the river.

  “Whitlock Mills,” I muttered in disbelief, clicking on the name. “An old watermill, closed down in the nineteenth century.” I noted the postcode and nodded to Mills, who followed me from Smith’s desk.

  “You think they went there?”

  “I think it’s as good a place to start as any. And if the Hocking brothers cared about Selene as much as they claim to, they might think of it too.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Thatcher

  My phone rang again as we reached Mills’s car, the rain lightening up now despite the ominous clouds above. I didn’t recognise the number, but answered it quickly, shutting the car door behind me.

  “Thatcher,” I answered.

  “Inspector? It’s Rupert. Rupert Hocking.”

  “I know who you are, Rupert,” I answered dryly, waving for Mills to pull away from the street and head out of the city.

  “I was wondering,” he trailed off a little. “I was wondering if you had my Uncle Richard’s address.”

  I paused, listening to the dull thud of the rain, the dimmed radio Mills had turned down and the squeaking of the windscreen wipers.

  “His address?” I repeated for clarification.

  “Yes. You do have it, don’t you?”

  “I do.” I found Mills’s notebook and skimmed through the pages, rattling off the address. I could hear him repeat it quietly to himself as he wrote it down.

  “Rupert?”

  “Yes, Inspector?”

  “What do you plan on doing with it, if I might ask?”

  “I can’t help but think that all of this might go a lot smoother if we stopped beating around the bush. My little sister might be hurt, damn their ancient pathetic squabble.”

  I laughed at that, a short sharp bark that had Mills glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

  “Good luck with that, Rupert. Leave your sister to us, though,” I added in a more severe tone of voice.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he answered absently, the dull ring of the ended phone call following a beat later.

  “You think he’ll leave us to it?” Mills asked.

  “Not a chance,” I muttered, putting my phone down on my knee, screen side up in case anyone decided to reach out.

  “He wanted Richard’s address?”

  “He did. That boy’s smarter than most of them. Hadn’t expected that when we first met him,” I admitted. “I may have been a tad harsh.”

  “You usually are on first impression,” Mills pointed out. “I doubt you liked me straight away.”

  I didn’t answer that, only grinned at him and patted him on the head. “I like you plenty, lad. Just keep your foot down.”

  He was quiet for a few minutes, listening to the quiet radio. “Do you think they’ll hurt her?” he asked me in a low voice.

  “Rose? I don’t know. It won’t do them any favours if they do. Whatever they want from all this,” I still couldn’t quite figure that out, “they’re going about a very strange way of achieving it.”

  “Money?”

  “Perhaps. But why not sell the painting?”

  “Maybe they need more. The amount they might get from exploiting a secret like theirs against Lord Hocking.”

  “I wonder if they know,” I muttered thoughtfully, staring out the window. “They never found the letter, we did. Do they even know they’ve picked the right brother?”

  “Maybe they’re hoping that Richard would come to her aid in any case,” Mills suggested, “or just going for Lord Hocking since he’s the one with all the cash.”

  “Risky business,” I added, “for all they know they’ve been barking up the wrong tree. I doubt they’d get much from Richard.”

  “They’re still a family. And the scandal would reach Hocking’s name as well,” Mills said. “He’d still do what he could to protect that image. And fall out or no, I’m sure he wouldn’t let that happen to his own brother.” His tone turned slightly bitter, and I knew how much he was annoyed by the brothers for tearing themselves apart like this. He was close to his own brother, regular family meals together if his calendar was anything to go by. Mills did a good job of keeping a lid on his displeasure, unlike myself, and it did amuse me somewhat when it came to light.

  “I’m not sure everyone’s as noble as you are, Isaac.”

  “Not sure anyone is.” He let out a long, loud sigh, fingers slackening on the wheel, shoulders slumping slightly. “Do you ever feel like we’re helping the wrong people? If this were a book I was reading, I’d be in favour of Sebastian and Nadia. Taking a stand against the men who gave them their childhoods. The Hockings are in the wrong, all of them. Sandow included.” His voice fell slightly as he spoke, and I shifted in my seat so that I could see his face properly.

  “That perspective,” I assured him, “makes you an extremely good detective, Mills. Most people wouldn’t bother thinking about the other side of it all. They see a criminal, find the criminals, and end of. Job done. You see things from their side, see the whole picture. They’re not bad people for one thing they’ve done, and Hocking isn’t a good man for being their victim. People aren’t nearly that simple, Mills and bearing that in mind the way you do is precisely why I haven’t had you shipped off to Lincoln yet.”

  He hazarded a glance at me. “You agree with me?”

  “I do. There will be times when I don’t, but I’ll listen to you, anyway. You’ve got good instincts, lad. Sharp logic. Don’t be scared of it. Or of me,” I added with a smirk.

  “I’m not scared of you,” he muttered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you sure you’re not scared of Jeannie?” he retorted. I turned back to the window. “Any news from her? Thought she’d been hanging around trying to get this story from you.”

  “Let news of Rose’s abduction get out and about, and she’ll be here. At the moment, it’s just a rich man with a lost fortune. She won’t care about it yet.”

  “Bring in a missing girl and a family secret of illegitimate children?”

  “She’ll cling to it like a bee to lavender.” Mills snorted a laugh. “Good thing we learnt that Ragsdale came from this village,” he mused after a pause, “rather than the estate one.”

  “You’ll have to tell your mother her book was wrong.”

  “She’ll be heartbroken. She’ll have to fix it.”

  “Writing in books? I do that.”

  Mills grimaced at me. “That’s dreadful.”

  “Only my own books,” I defended myself, “never a library book or anything.”

  We fell into a companionable silence then, weaving along bumpy country lanes. The rain had stopped at long last, a pitiful amount of sun trying to break through in its stead.

  The village we trundled into looked like it belonged on a postcard, or a tourist website for visiting England. Little stone cottage with tidy gardens, low-lying walls where dog walkers stopped to sit, sharing a flask between them. Apple trees growing along the road, the perfect height for nicking an apple or two on your way home from school.

  We followed the long windy road through the village, slowly, so as to gawp at a few shop fronts, and then we w
ere out the other side, along a muddy track of farmland and houses. We crossed a bridge over the river and then turned, following it along for a while until the shadow of the old mill came into view.

  “Stop here,” I told Mills, and he pulled into a little layby. “We’ll go on foot.”

  Mills looked at the muddy ground outside, riddled with puddles, down at his own shoes and then back up to me. “Really?”

  “Really.” I plastered on a fake smile, climbing from the car and studying the road. Looking over the field, I could see the rooftops of the village, little chimneys sticking up, the trees in the distance. When I turned around, I saw fields, still a little barren, with the odd tufts of green poking up from the cold earth. A line of trees ended them, and through them, if my geography was correct, the Hocking estate would be found sprawling out along the hills.

  There was only the one road leading down to the bridge. It went up past the mill, but I doubted it went far. There was nowhere else to go but more fields.

  The mill itself was a sorry affair. There were hundreds just like it, I knew, scattered about the country. It was mostly a shell of a building now, open to the elements so that you see straight through to the other side on the higher floors. The lower looked mostly intact. It rather looked like it had been salvaged a little, reinforced with random bits of wood and scraps of corrugated metal. The river ran beside it, brown with mud and strewn with weeds. The wheel itself was rotting, almost half fallen into the river, the iron bolt securing it to the building whistling and creaking as the wind shifted around.

  “Sir,” Mills called me quietly, pointing down at the road. Tyre tracks ran along, up towards the back of the mill. “Someone’s been here recently.”

  “Someone’s made the place sound,” I pointed out, jerking my thumb to the ground floor of the mill.

  “Still in use. Could be squatters,” he said offhandedly.

  “Could be. Doubt it,” I answered. I buttoned my coat up against the wind and started off down the path, avoiding the puddles and softer, squelchy patches of mud. We ended up walking like a dance troupe, leaping from solid dry land to solid dry land, only a muffled cry from Mills when he misstepped and got mud splattered up the side of his trousers.

  I waved a hand to quieten him as we reached the mill itself. We walked around the back, following the road, and as we walked around, I could see where the building had been patched up and held together all the way around. The materials were random, everything done a little haphazardly, but it held. Someone cared about this place, I realised. They were putting the same sloppily devotion into it as I was with my coaching house… though I’d never abducted anyone to my coaching house before. If anything, I tried to keep them away.

  The road passed between the boundary of the next field, the hedge overgrown and gnarled, odd, straggled arms of thorns falling into the road. The mill was on our right, and as we rounded the corner, we ended up in a small yard, a little car left in the driveway. I knew that car, I realised, and checked the number plate.

  Sebastian.

  Mills caught up with me, stopping by my elbow and we looked around. Another long hedge grew along the side of the river, up to the wheel itself, the area beyond hidden slightly by stacks of wood leant up against the side of the building. It was quiet, very quiet.

  I turned to the mill, to the reinforced walls with its boarded-up and newspapered windows, and found a door. I rapped on it as I gently eased it open.

  “Sebastian? Nadia? It’s DCI Thatcher.” I kept my voice friendly. “Do you remember me?”

  I’d been a friend to them both, in a way, I had liked to think. Listened to them, believed them. God, that was annoying, but I swallowed my anger and stepped inside the building, muscles tense.

  The inside was not quite as held together as the outside. In the main chunk of the ground floor, the ceiling was open to the floors above, residual raindrops plinking down onto the concrete floor. But to the side of it, a makeshift ceiling had been propped up, a small kitchen area, and a desk protected from the weather. A little heater was on, glowing orange. Two armchairs were placed by it with blankets, and thick jumpers left lying around. A few mugs were littered about the space, left on tables and on the floor.

  “Sebastian?” I called again. “Nadia? We only want to talk to you both.”

  We walked further in, shutting the door gently behind us. The place was exposed to the elements enough without us leaving the door open. Mills wandered to the open section of the mill, staring up at the skeletal rooms above. There was another door that led into an enclosed room stacked with dusty old barrels and crates, but no sign of the twins or Rose.

  I headed over to the enclosed area, which felt vaguely homely. A few magnets had been stuck to the fridge, snacks lay in the cupboard, a shopping list even sat on the counter by the kettle, nothing nefarious in its contents. Unless there was something weird you could do with oranges, bread, and cheese that I didn’t know about. I walked past the little seating area, spotting a fold-up table propped against the wall. The heater churned out enough heat to warm my shins, and I bent to touch the blankets and jumpers. Cold, no one had worn them recently, but I supposed they kept the heater all the time. I was surprised the place had any electricity, to be honest.

  The desk was next for me to check, and most of it was covered by an old bed sheet with some cartoon characters on. I pulled it back, and sighed, looking over my shoulder to Mills.

  “Found it,” I called, and as he came over, I pulled the sheet fully away. There were the small painting and its frame. It was, I had to admit, a nice painting. The details were good and the light nice to look at. But hardly worth all the fuss it had been. Mills stopped by my side,

  “I was expecting something a bit grander,” he admitted somewhat sullenly.

  “Me too. Well,” I put the sheet back to keep it protected, “at least we found it.”

  I looked over the rest of the desk, but there was little on top save for a few tools used to pry off the frame and two empty mugs. So, I checked the drawers and found them to be far more useful than anything I’d found on this case.

  In the first one were maps of the estate and the surrounding countryside, and in the one below, a slightly bent photograph. It was of Selene, holding a little Sebastian, wearing a thick, slightly ugly jumper. She was smiling down at him, her hands grasping him tightly. I picked it up, looking at it closely. Her sleeves were pushed up slightly, the skin of her wrists just visible, and the faint shape of a tattoo was just clear to me.

  “Time’s like this I wish I had a magnifying glass,” I muttered.

  “Here.” Mills handed me one, and I stared at him. “It was with the tools,” he defended himself. “Must be fiddly business.”

  I took it and held it to the picture, frowning down. It looked like three loops, all intertwined.

  “I never knew what the three knots were for,” a voice startled me, and I dropped the photo, turning to find Sebastian standing in the doorway. “What do you think, Inspector? Her, Lord Hocking, and Richard Sandow? Or her, me, and Nadia?”

  On cue, Nadia appeared by his shoulder.

  “Hello, again,” I greeted them.

  “Might we take this outside?” Sebastian asked politely. I nodded, and the twins left, Mills and I following after them. They were in the yard, making to walk past the wheel, when a car screeched into the yard, Rupert Hocking falling out from the driver’s seat, staring at me, at Mills, and the twins.

  “Where,” he demanded, fixing his jumper, “is my sister?”

  I paid him no mind, not as more car doors opened and Richard Sandow climbed out, followed by Lord Hocking.

  “So much for leaving this to us, Rupert,” I said dryly, as Henry appeared next.

  Twenty-Nine

  Thatcher

  Mills and I stood halfway between what felt like an old-fashioned shootout. I half expected some lads in long coats and flat caps to emerge from the shadows with pistols. The only thing that came from the buildi
ng behind us was a faint sigh of the wind through the cracks.

  Lord Hocking and his brother, by some miracle performed by Rupert, were struck still, staring at the twins who had shuffled away from them, Sebastian’s arm wrapping around Nadia’s shoulders.

  “Shall I make some introductions?” I offered, trying to keep everyone as calm and civil as I could.

  “We don’t want to know,” Nadia told me hastily, her eyes wide and pleading. “Whichever one of them it is, we don’t want to know.”

  “Alright,” I assured them. “Sebastian, Nadia, this Lord Hocking, Richard Sandow, and Henry and Rupert Hocking.” I turned to them. “This is Sebastian Whitlock and Nadia White. Selene’s children.” I fixed my attention back to the twins who scanned the four semi-strangers warily.

  “You’ve got Rose?” I asked. Sebastian nodded. “Is she safe?”

  “We haven’t hurt her,” Nadia snapped.

  “Where is she?” Henry asked, more gently than I imagined he would.

  “No, no.” Sebastian pulled his arm away from his sister. “You don’t get to ask questions. You don’t get to make demands.”

  “You stole Lord Hocking’s painting, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “We thought it would be there,” Nadia told me. She had turned to face us, looking like she was desperately trying to ignore the other.

  “Your mother’s letter?”

  She gave a shaky nod, jaw clenching slightly at the mention of her mother.

  “But it wasn’t,” I pieced it all aloud for them, “so you came back to the house, didn’t you? But we were there. And you shut my sergeant in an airtight room.”

  Sebastian flinched, turning to Mills. “I didn’t realise.”

  Mills raised a shoulder. “I’m alive.”

  “So, you had to leave without the letter, knowing that we’d seen you there. You came back, left another note and took Rose.”